Baby C

Baby A, Baby B and Baby C were found in suitcases in Burton-on-Trent in November and December 1953.

They were each found in a suitcase with stockings tied round their necks.

The pathologist said that it was impossible to say whether the babies had been born alive but said that they were developed enough to have had a separate existence.

The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder by some person or persons unknown against two of the babies and an open verdict against the third.

It was noted that each of the three babies had cheap common stockings tied in exactly the same way round their necks and the pathologist said that the ligatures would have probably caused death had the babies been alive. The pathologist noted that 'nobody was going to put their head in a noose by tying stockings round the necks of children already dead'.

It was noted that the body of one of the babies had been taken by a woman whose baby it was said to have been on her honeymoon.

The Coroner said, 'I do not suppose in the history of crime there has ever been a woman complacent enough to go on her honeymoon with a dead baby's body as part of her trousseau'.

The woman who was said to have been the mother of two of the babies said that the third child was not hers and that it had been left by a girl whilst she was living with her mother at Farm Hill in Leeds. However, the police said that they were unable to find anyone by the name that the woman gave for the girl.

The woman said that the two babies were born whilst she was married to one of her husbands between 1947 and 1950 but who at the time of the inquest was dead.

She said that when the second child was born she passed out and that after she came round and asked where it was and said that her husband said to her that he 'had seen to it and I was not to worry'.

When the Coroner summed up, he said, 'The husband is dead, and cannot come here to refute it and we do not know if the girl ever existed'.